Meeting #3, January 26, 2009

We turned a corner this week – the girls are getting really excited about what we’re working on and some of them are overflowing with ideas. We had a special guest speaker today, Jana Underwood. She is an occupational therapist for JCPS and serves Westport as one of her schools. Jana was inviting and thoughtful, sharing a wealth of information in a way that the girls understood. She talked to them about universal design and access for students with disabilities. Since we’ve spend part of two afternoons in Ms. Stark’s classroom she talked about the specific issues in her room. These include major obstacles like the post inside the door to things that most of us wouldn’t notice, like the faint flicker of fluorescent light that can be profoundly disturbing to a child with autism. The girls were empathetic, and began identifying the many inconveniences and small changes they might include in their designs. We also talked about some of the technologies that have been developed for students with disabilities.

One of the areas we talked about is the entrance to the building by Ms. Stark’s room. In poor weather, students get off the bus and wait in an area that isn’t covered while the doors to the building are opened. Even in good weather, the area isn’t exactly the most inviting…..it has a lovely view of the dumpsters and the parking lot.

Next we went to Ms. Stark’s room for a tour. Even though we’ve been in the room doing measurements, we haven’t really looked at it through the eyes of the children who spend much of the day there. Ms. Stark identified the amount of visual clutter as a real dilemma and distraction. She needs a large amount of storage for the variety of supplies and texts she uses to individualize instruction, but many of her students are overwhelmed by the stimulation from things like books on shelves, bulletin board displays, and stacks of bins and books along the walls. We talked about her need for a more calming environment, with basic needs like simple closed cabinets that are consistent throughout the room and fabric curtains that can easily be moved to cover and uncover the bulletin boards as she uses them. Her students also need a quiet, more secluded area for self calming. Ms. Stark needs to be able to see into this area for supervision, but it could include a translucent screen from the rest of the room and a variety of textures and fabrics for sensory stimulation.

See the document here that is my compilation of the students’ notes from our talk with Ms. Underwood and Ms. Stark.